Nobody is more pessimistic about the Carolina Panthers than I am. I am so jaded from years of over and over disappointment and times in the past when I was given reasons by the team to be hopeful, I have almost always been let down badly. Therefore it is easy to understand why it is that I would just assume they are going to get their asses handed to them against the Green Bay Packers, who on paper and in person are a much better team.
But this now makes twice this season that Carolina has had shock upset victories so perhaps there are a few weapons that Carolina has that Green Bay just can't overcome. Still though, when the bookies make your team a 13 point underdog prior to the game's start, it is basically universally thought that your team is inferior in every possible way.
This one image might seem of little consequence but it was actually one of the most defining and deterministic moments of the entire game. Green Bay was about to tie the game on a goal line drive and it appeared as though 223 lb veteran running back Josh Jacobs busted through to the end zone with just over 2 minutes remaining but when the play was reviewed you can see that when he gets though the pack he doesn't have the ball.
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he's got the ball, just maybe a centimeter or so over the line there
Carolina claimed to have stripped him of the ball and they did but this is where American football gets to be a bit complicated and not well understood by other nationalities. Unlike in rugby where the ball must touch the ground to be a try, in American football the ball need only cross the supposed "force field" that is the end zone line. Upon further review that took quite some time, it was determined that while he WAS stripped of the ball, this happened to Josh Jacobs after the ball had already crossed the invisible aerial line.
This didn't give Green Bay the lead though although it could have if they had gone for two points. But seeing as how Carolina had only scored a single TD and two field goals in the entire game, it did seem unlikely that they would be able to do so in just the two minutes that remained in the game.
All Green Bay had to do was hold Carolina like they had successfully done the entire game for another 2 minutes but man, American football is a crazy sport: Virtually nothing can happen for the past 20 minutes and then in the following 2 everything happens.
While I was waiting for them to somehow screw it up, Carolina went on to have an absolutely brilliant final drive including one very high risk play that paid off because Green Bay never suspected it.
When you are dealing with the ticking clock and the need to get to the end zone before time runs out, one of the things that you almost never want to do is to run the ball down the center. Why? Because if the play is unsuccessful and you don't get a 1st down while doing it, the clock continues to burn and you can find yourself running out of time to even try to score.
with just 45 seconds left in the game and with 10 yards to the first down, I don't think anyone was expecting a quick hand off for a running play dead center. This resulted in a rather huge gain at a crucial moment and now Carolina had themselves in field goal range.
A 35 yard or so field goal is definitely not a gimmie, but Carolina's kicker Ryan Fitzgerald has been a busy boy this season since most of the Carolina points have come via field goal. So with the clock at nearly zero seconds, nailing this 35-yard shot meant the end of the game.
I was shocked, the fans were shocked, the bookies were shocked, Carolina was probably shocked.
Look at the bet breakdown here:
This is for straight bets on a victor and you can see that even though Green Bay were -900 favorites, 97% of people still get on that, meaning that if Green Bay had won that a $1000 bet would only pay out $100. For those 4% of people that bet on Carolina for the win at +600, they made out pretty well.
So confident was the sporting world that Carolina was going to get worked in this game that even though you had to bet for the Packers to win by at least 14 points for it to pay out on the spread, over 65% of bets and over 70% of all money was bet that this would end up happening.
I don't know what it is that Carolina has that Green Bay just can't seem to deal with, but I suppose after beating them twice in the same season we can probably say that there is definitely something there that Green Bay just can seem to get past that other teams have very little difficulty doing.
One needs to look at Green Bay and wonder if they too are not really ready or qualified to enter the post-season, which seems to often be the case for Green Bay. They convincingly defeated Detroit and Pittsburgh but lose to Carolina and Cleveland? It just doesn't make sense.
Something that is kind of fun about this season is that there doesn't seem to be any particular standout dominant team. Even the teams with the best records have a couple of losses and nobody has fewer than 2.
From a bookmaking (betting) point of view it is kind of amusing that the team that is paying the least if you are to pick a national champion right now, is the Kansas City Chiefs, meaning that they are considered by the bookies to the the most likely team to win it all. At the moment they have nearly the same record as Carolina and not only are they not the number 1 team in the NFL, they are 3 out of 4 in their own division.